A Fine Gael councillor has asked if here has been any movement towards the building of a new county council chamber in Navan. Cllr Gerry O’Connor asked the question at the October meeting of the council. He said that when the council looked at the issue some years ago councillors were told that the council intended to provide space for 150 more employees. It was his hope that the question would be looked at before the November meeting of the council.
Pointing to the room in which the council was meeting he said “This is a classroom, it is not conducive to politics. I can’t communicate during a meeting with my colleagues”. It was the only county council in the country that did not have a proper chamber. “We were given a commitment that we would only be in this room for two years. We are now longer than two years in it”. He got support for that view from his colleague Cllr Joe Fox.
Cllr Brian Fitzgerald said a new council chamber must be got “up and running otherwise we will go back to the old chamber in Railway Street. At least it was workable. If we’re not going to build a chamber let’s go back to Navan. We are not going to continue on with this forever and a day”. Turning to tourist attractions and facilities in the county he said he felt like “a second-class citizen in my part of the county”. “We have no greenways, we have no cycleways”. He also raised an issue about dangers for people walking to the new Applegreen station in his area. People were coming from the housing estates, and the secondary and national schools. I put up with so much in this chamber but I still don’t have traffic lights or a link road”.
Cllr Mike Bray said that a number of good road schemes had been done throughout the county but he looked for more progress on the Clogher Road and Church View area. There had been an ongoing issue of flooding there, he said. He had stood with residents there who had had their rooms flooded. The council had always reacted quickly but much more needed to be done.
Cllr Alan Tobin asked if the council could go after certain business people for rates at a time before they have received permission for planning retention. Those businesses had an unfair advantage over other businesses that were paying their rates. On a separate issue, he asked when the county was going to have a public bike scheme.
Cllr Paddy Meade referred back to the recent Storm Amy. He said the 24-hour emergency call phone line went to a 27-minute delay from about 6pm on that evening. He said during that period one of the national roads in Meath had been blocked. He said that volunteers had to go out and clear the road. “Should it be our policy that if the phone delay goes over 10 minutes should be contact the Gardai or ambulance service? There was a great voluntary response from the local communities but that might not be there the next time”.
